Category Archives: Strength Training

First thing is first: you ought to be very proud of me. Despite my HORRIFIC blogging habits as of late, I have been much better with my exercise and eating habits! I have been squeezing in (short), but effective workouts throughout the week and it has been wonderful! Last week, Jordan and I hit up a park that I haven’t been to in years for a short run/ strength workout. What I really enjoyed about the park setup was that there was a lovely 1-mile trail loop that you could run, but along the path, there were a series of strength stations! Many of them were QUITE familiar (ie: push-ups, sit-ups, bench-lifts), but some of them were pretty tricky! (I tried to locate a picture of one for you, but since I am not entirely sure of its real name, my Google searches ended up being “strength station where you lift your legs laterally and jump” and “lateral leg lift over bar playground”… needless to say, those terms yielded very few results.

Anyway, I really enjoyed being able to split up our (very short) run with little bursts of strength training and it made me start thinking of ways to break up circuits like that on my own!

I really cannot believe the difference I feel when I start running after a long hiatus. Granted, the first few days are rough, but once I get back into the groove, it makes me feel like a NEW WOMAN.

Additionally, a couple of weeks ago, I fired up myfitnesspal again and have been using that semi-faithfully. Even when I’m not 100% on my a-game for a day, it’s still nice to have someone to “answer to.”

Other than that, I have been busy, busy, busy with work! Which leads me to the tale of this weekend’s stay in a MOTEL.

Yeah, that’s right kids, this girl stayed in The World’s Most Frightening Motel for two whole nights.

Truth-be-told, I really am a pretty easy-going traveler. Sure, I love nice amenities, but if things are clean and fresh, I really don’t complain!

But this, phew. This might take some therapy in order to recover fully.

I’ll give you the Cliffsnotes version: This weekend, I had an out-of-town event that was held in a very small little lake town. There aren’t a ton of accommodations to choose from, so I was forced to sign my staff and I up for rooms at a quaint little “inn” (MOTEL. IT WAS A MO.TEL.). Fortunately for them (and maybe me, by extension), most of their rooms were “fine.” Mine, on the other hand, have so many problems, I can’t even quite figure out how to share the worst of it with you, but let’s go with the three biggest offenses:

1. When I walked in, one of the pillows from one of the beds was on the floor, there was no toilet paper in the bathroom, and it smelled like 1970.

2. In the morning, when I went to take my shower, the water temperature was SO uncontrollable that it fluctuated between ICE cold and SCALDING hot. So much so that I couldn’t even stay under it long enough to shave both of my legs. (Evidently, this was because other guests were using the showers at the same time. Well, duh! Why didn’t IIIIIIIII think of that?!??! A motel. Other guests? ONE SHOWER AT A TIME, PEOPLE.

3. Just before I went to check-out, I took a look under my bed to make sure that I didn’t leave anything behind. Fully expecting to find a sock, a magazine, an earring, maybe a quarter that fell out of my purse….boy, was I shocked to discover OPENED bags of snacks that were NOT mine. If only I had known that there were bags of dried fruit hiding under my bed. That really could have helped with those late-night snack attacks!

Fortunately for me, I was able to spend one of those nights with Chloe (who has a magical ability to make rotten situations feel magically better) and we laughed the night away as we discovered all of the “fancy” amenities that the room *actually* had to offer. (Dead spiders, lamps that didn’t work, heaters that smelled like grandma’s closet….). Even though I’d NEVER stay there again, I must say that the memories ended up being WELL worth the frustration.

I am fairly certain that my motel experience was karma’s way of getting at me for all of those terrible scary movies that I’ve made Katherine and Katie suffer through with me. OY.

Needless to say, I am thrilled to be home again.

I hope that you all had a great weekend and I will talk to you again soon!!!

When you hear this story, you will probably do two things. First of all, you’ll laugh. And then you will wonder why you bother reading the blog of a crazy woman.

The fact that this exact same series of events (nearly) happened last week only makes matters worse.

So tonight after work, I decided that it was time to head out for some gym time. I was rearing and ready to go with a cardio plan in my head and a new ab routine that I copied down in hand. I drove the short distance to the gym and drove past the window. What did I see but about 450 fellow gym-goers. Machines were racing and weights were flying left and right. I pulled into a parking spot. And sat there for a solid two minutes debating whether or not to go in. I turned the car off, I turned the car back on again. I turned the car off and on once again. I did (yet another) loop past the window and pulled back into my parking spot. I was fully convinced that I was actually going to walk in this time. Instead, I drove back home and never looked back. (FORTUNATELY, I did finish the ab workout and also a leg workout at home which is good because otherwise I would feel like a complete and utter failure.) Anyway, let us call this an Exercise In Flexibility. And also a glimpse into the life of a socially awkward fitness fanatic. 😉

For those interested, here are the two workouts that I managed to complete:

2. Abs: Runner’s Workout (this one is new to me, but I really enjoyed it! Additionally, this article has some really interesting information about the mechanics of running and the muscles involved. I highly recommend it.)

Dinner tonight was kind of a bust. I had a five-piece chicken nugget and baked potato from Wendy’s. Semi-tasty, but not particularly nutritious and not particularly filling.

In other news, I have been continuing to research half-marathons in an attempt to find the perfect race for me for 2013! Things are gettin’ surrrreous!

Tomorrow morning I am due in to work quite early, but the plan is to get to sleep early tonight and make it to the gym before work!

I’m sure that most of you know that I have been complaining for weeks about never being sore anymore following a workout. Even when I think I gave it 110% and tried something new and difficult, I never, ever seemed to hurt anymore! Granted, I don’t love being sore, but I love feeling like I did something good for myself and then of course there’s that whole no pain no gain thing, right?

Well, I don’t think you’ll be seeing any posts like that again until I’m at about ninety years old because today, just one day after day one of Boot Camp, I am so unbelievably sore I can barely move. I suppose this is a case of “careful what you wish for,” eh?

The class was actually a lot of fun (at the time). There was quite a wide range of ages and was definitely enough of a challenge to keep me on my toes. Even starting at 7:45 wasn’t too terrible. The class combined both cardio and strength exercises and incorporated a bunch of different training techniques in circuit-style. I think what ultimately killed me was the final 10-minute blip of ground-to-clouds with dumbbells that had burpees mixed in. Ten minutes of constant lifting broken up with nothing but The World’s Worst Cardio Move Ever: Burpees. Ouch! I could tell by about halfway through yesterday when my legs were already starting to feel like rubber that today would be painful.

Interestingly, come to find out, that last killer move was actually an adapted CrossFit move (did anyone know that ESPN & Reebok have “CrossFit Games“?? I never, ever, ever, ever watch ESPN. Ever. But ironically, today I somehow stumbled across the CrossFit Games which featured a bunch of crazy ripped people doing ridiculous things involving scary fitness contraptions.) I have heard of CrossFit in passing, but I’ve never really looked into what it was until today. Evidently it’s the system that many police academies and also divisions of the marines base their trainings on. It involves weights, cardio and lots and lots of intervals.

Granted, I do not plan to ever *actually* follow the CrossFit plan. It would probably kill me and also sounds pretty risky (although they do note that adapting the weights and reps makes the plan adaptable for everyone– even elderly participants), it did get me thinking about finding some sort of strength-training-ish program that I can actually follow along with that has scheduled workouts for each day. P90x is essentially that, but I wasn’t crazy about that system. As we all know, I also hate working out at home, so videos aren’t my first choice. But now I’m on the hunt! Ultimately, I’ll probably end up throwing my own plan together with different pieces from all of these programs, but hopefully my search will lead me to some good stuff. I just discovered the Eat, Spin, Run, Repeat blog today and there are some really great workouts there. A lot of them sound very challenging, but are also entirely do-able and not too complicated at all which is a definite plus. I’ve definitely decided that I want to spend the fall doing mostly strength and total-body workouts instead of strictly running. My plan is to begin training for a half-marathon in early 2013, so that gives me a few months of wiggle room. I’ll definitely have to keep a few running days in the schedule so I don’t lose the base I built up with the 5k training!

So overall, I definitely enjoyed Boot Camp, but that’s only once a week. I must say, it is entirely possible that it will take an entire week for me to re-gain normal functioning in my legs and back again from this week, but once I’m able to walk again, I’ll be excited to test out some new routines.

In other news, I’ve also picked right back up on the healthy eating. Although today I made a batch of my favorite wheat and peanut butter bites, but ate about 4 too many of those. 😛

Apologies for the lack of a post last night! We had company from out of town mixed in with a special town event for work and the night got away from me very quickly!